Something
by VikiCullen
Summary: Sequel to "In Pieces" but can be read alone...Hermione searches desperately for her tormentor during the Final Battle. Nothing turns into Something. R&R! :DD No flames please:


**Disclaimer: J.K.R and Warner Bro's and every other who has claimed Harry Potter. Not me anyways! Um..do R&R! :D**

She ran. She ran through the battlefield, the moans and groans of the wounded-and soon dead- bodies littering the ground echoing in her ears. She had to find him.

Yes, despite everything he had done to her, she _needed _to see his face. See his emotionless gray eyes.

No, not entirely emotionless. She had learned to detect that faint flicker of _something_ that sometimes flashed in his eyes; like lightning striking before quickly hiding behind storm gray clouds.

So she ran, bumped into the fighters, ducking hexes and firing quick successions of her own against the masked enemy.

She stumbled over a body and fell flat on her face, the blood soaked ground creating smudges of reddish brown mud all over her clothes and smearing her face. A groan came from the body she stumbled upon.

She looked quickly for any sign of flaxen strands but when she found none she ignored the fallen and rose on shaky legs.

Her eyes were searching desperately for just a glimpse of platinum hair in the midst of battle.

She gripped her wand tightly and decided to look in the caste. She practically flew the rest of the way through the battlefield, her way lightened up by flashes of green, red, blue and every other colour imaginable.

Still, she looked for a hint of flaxen lightened up by the flashes; preferably not a green one.

The doors to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry stood wide open, like a mouth stretched into a horrified scream at the sight of the carnage below.

The school was empty, the only sound in the silence being her footsteps against the stone floor and her ragged breathing.

_She had to find him._

Then she saw _it._

The flash of blonde she had been searching for, for hours.

She ran for the black clad figure standing alone on the top of the stairwell.

Before her mind realized that the shade of blonde she was seeing wasn't the right one, that the height of the figure and build was wrong and that the eyes behind the silver mask held the _wrong _emotions in their lightning flashes, her chest was hit with a red pillar of light and she crumbled tot the ground, screaming in agony.

Yes, Lucius Malfoy had practiced his Crucio's well; almost _too_ well.

She bit down on her tongue, tasting the copper tang of blood, but paying it no mind. The pain was too much for her to handle.

Her skin seemed to stretch, rip and sting. Her eyes were burning; it felt like they were trying to creep out of their sockets to end the pain. Her teeth and nails were slowly being pulled out of their place, only to grow back again so the process could be repeated.

Her entire body was pulsating, twitching in pain, silent screams stretching her mouth wide, cracking the dry skin covering her lips.

Then suddenly it all _stopped_.

Hermione pulled herself up to her hand and knees, vision blurry, head pounding and teeth chattering.

"What?" a dazed question fell from her bleeding mouth, her brilliant mind too overheated by the pain to realize what had occurred.

"Silence, Mudblood" with those words most of her haze cleared and the pieces fell into place.

Wrong Malfoy. _Shit._

This day couldn't get any worse she thought dejectedly.

He stepped down a couple of stairs and looked at her; Hermione could _feel_ the sneer behind the mask he wore.

"Finally, on your hand and knees, where you belong" he gloated of her trembling body.

Hermione's brain started to sketch up an emergency escape plan. If she stayed where she was much longer, he would certainly kill her. She noticed that she still was gripping her wand tightly in her fist_. Bingo._

She looked up into his eyes defiantly and before he could open his mouth for another comment she mumbled a tripping hex that sent him sailing through the air, landing head first below the stairs.

The whole episode had taken approximately fifteen minutes of her searching time. Hermione got up on wobbly legs and stood over Lord Malfoy's body. His forehead was bleeding, but his eyelids were twitching, which meant that his head didn't hit the stairs as hard as she had hoped.

"Stupefy"

His eyelids stopped their movement and she raised her wand again to slit his throat.

Just a quick "Diffindo" would do the trick.

She brought her hand up in a high arch when a name popped into her mind and she realized exactly _who_ she had at her mercy.

She couldn't kill him.

Draco would never survive without his father, now that had gotten to Bellatrix and Mrs. Malfoy was killed by Tonks.

She pursed her lips in agitation and mumbled "mobilicorpus".

She moved his body and put a disillusion charm on his body, triggered to reveal Malfoy Sr. when his heir passed by.

She stood there for a while, looking at Lucius Malfoy's invisible body and wondering why she had shown mercy. God knows that she shouldn't have. She was already starting to regret her decision.

"_They got tired of your filthy Mudblood cunt, did they?" he sneered._

_A part of her wanted to scream at him, shout that __he __sure never got tired of said __filthy cunt, __that he always came back for more._

_But she didn't, for she knew that any words of spite that was uttered from her lips would have consequences later, when he would catch up with her…somewhere where nobody could see them._

_So she held her tongue and stayed silent as he continued his verbal abuse, she stayed silent as her heart was shredded to pieces in front of his friends and forced herself not to give any outward sign of pain._

No, Draco_ certainly_ wasn't worth it…but _still,_ she did it for _him._

She snapped p

Out of her thoughts and continued her search, this time, hoping to find the _right_ Malfoy.

Almost immediately after she started walking in a faster pace along the empty corridors, she felt eyes on her back.

She turned her head quickly, and when the Death Eater saw that she had noticed him, he took off in a sprint…right towards her.

Hermione turned away from the enemy and ran as fast as she could, knowing that her energy was drained from the Crucio earlier and that another interaction with a Death Eater would surely knock her unconscious; if the Death Eater hadn't already succeeded in killing her before that.

The Death Eater was closer now and she noticed that the steps _sounded_ vaguely familiar –Dolhov perhaps? – How _steps_ could sound familiar she had no idea.

Her feet came to a screeching halt when she realized what had happened. In her blind running she hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings and was now caught between a dead end and a Death Eater.

Hermione thought of how cruel fate was before she was hit with the Cruciatus curse for the second time that day.

The pain issued from the spell also felt familiar, this pain was mostly leaning towards the emotional than the physical, the opposite of Lucius spells effects on her. She felt her body tense and writhe in pain, felt imaginary teeth scraping against her skin, felt a painful increasing of her heart beat and she realized who the caster was.

_He crushed his mouth to hers, his teeth scraping her lips, her dirty blood caressing his wet tongue as it violated her mouth._

_His hands grabbed roughly at any skin he could find and when he found himself unsatisfied with the amount of flesh he ripped her cloak of and left it a crumpled black mess on the stone floor beneath his dragon hide boots._

_Her skirt was forced up around her wide hips, her knickers yanked off faster than you could say 'Mudblood' and her legs spread wide for him._

_She wasn't ready and frankly he couldn't care less._

_His trousers fell to a heap around his ankles as he furiously pounded into her, murmuring how insignificant she was to him._

_How little her presence in the world mattered to him._

"_You are just a whore, Mudblood, you mean nothing" he spat and bit into her shoulder roughly, again tasting her filthy blood in his mouth._

The pain stopped with her revelation and she looked up with tear filled eyes to finally see those eyes she had been searching for.

**Draco.**

"I found you…" Hermione mumbled through chattering teeth.

The Dark Lord was gone now, but many Death Eaters were still engaged in battle, trying to escape with their lives and freedom intact.

Harry had succeeded in killing Tom Riddle two hours into the fight and that was when she left her friend to search for the one who would need her assistance to escape the battlefield.

"You were searching for me, Mudblood?" he sneered and yanked of his mask, hair flying wildly around his face as the hood was removed. Finally, the _right_ shade of platinum.

Her lips formed a faint smile at the thought.

"Yes, you have to get out of here before they find you, the light side won" she informed him weakly, all signs of the bossy know-it-all she was gone when faced with this boy-no, man- that held her tattered heart in his hands. "Your father is next to the tapestry of Babel the Bubbly on the second floor; I thought that you'd need…" He interrupted her information rapport with a cold, curt word "Help?"

She nodded and saw his eyes darken with rage; probably not the best thing to tell a pure blood like Draco. Purebloods didn't need help from Mudbloods.

She rose on shaky legs for the ump-teenth time that day as he levelled his wand with her chest.

"Draco…don't"

"Shut up!" he yelled, eyes flashing rapidly with emotions as he hissed "Avada Kedavra!"

Moments before the light hit her, she noticed that the colour of the beam was off-more a pale jade than a dark emerald- and her face twisted into a positively evil smirk.

Salazar Slytherin himself would've been proud of that smirk.

The beam hit her chest and she felt terrible pain, like needles of all sizes and shapes being jammed into her heart, lungs and brain.

The sensation faded gradually and left a very smug looking-and very alive!-Hermione Granger looking up at a very shocked and angry looking Draco Malfoy.

"You have to _mean it_, Draco" she intoned mockingly.

The sassy bossy book-worm was back.

"I meant it" He growled, clutching his wand like a lifeline.

"Now, I'm a _living_ example that you didn't so you should just stop protesting" she said, still smug with her realization. "You never had any problems with giving me pain, after all, it was one of your ways to make sure that I knew I was _nothing_ in your eyes" She told him, sounding just like she did in class when Snape asked the students what the Grimunger Potions Law was.

Draco had gone a few shades paler and his wand hung limply from his fingers to his side, top aimed towards the floor.

She walked on weak legs towards him and leaned closer, like he used to do when he was about to tell her, her worth.

Her lips brushed against his cold skin as her mouth formed vengeful words.

"This, Draco, shows that…despite how many times you claimed that I meant _nothing_ to you…" She paused and walked past him and with her back turned to him she said "I do mean _something_ to you"

That night, as the light side celebrated it success and rain poured from the sky to clean the earth of blood, Draco stood, alone and still in that corridor, one word echoing in his head.

"_Something"_


End file.
